The Big Front Yard: And Other Stories

  “Stiffy,” yelled Meek. “Stiffy, you came out to get me.”

  Stiffy landed beside him, hauled him to his feet.

  “Dang right I came to get you,” he panted. “I thought them hoodlums would be up to some dirty tricks, so I stuck around and watched.”

  He jerked at Meek’s arm.

  “Come on, Oliver, we got to get along.”

  But Meek jerked his arm away.

  “Look what he’s doing!” he shouted. “Just look at him!”

  The Prowler seemed to be bent on systematic destruction of the space ship. His jaws were ripping at the steel plating … Ripping at it and tearing it away, peeling it off the frame as one might peel an orange.

  “Hey,” howled Stiffy. “You can’t do that. Get out of there, you danged …”

  The Prowler turned to look at them, a heavy power cable in its mouth.

  “You’ll be electrocuted,” yelped Stiffy. “Danged if it won’t serve you right.”

  But, far from being electrocuted, the Prowler seemed to be enjoying himself. He sucked at the power cable and his eyes glowed blissfully.

  Stiffy flourished his pistol.

  “Get away,” he yelled. “Get away or I’ll blister your danged hide.”

  Almost playfully the Prowler minced away from the ship, feet dancing.

  “He did it!” said Meek.

  “Did what?” Stiffy scowled bewilderedly.

  “Got away from that ship, just like you told him to.”

  Stiffy snorted. “Don’t even kid yourself he did it because I told him to. He couldn’t even hear me, probably. Living out here like this, he wouldn’t have anything to hear with. Probably he’s just trying to decide which one of us he’ll catch first. Better be ready to kick you up some dust.”

  The Prowler trotted toward them, head bobbing up and down.

  “Get going,” Stiffy yelled at Meek and brought up his pistol. A blue shaft of light whipped out, smacked the Prowler in the head, but the Prowler didn’t even falter in his stride. The energy charge seemed to have no power at all. It didn’t even spatter … it looked as if the blue pencil of raging death was boring straight into the spread of forehead between the monstrous eyes.

  “Run, you danged fool,” Stiffy screeched at Meek. “I can’t hold him off.”

  But Meek didn’t run … instead he sprang straight into the Prowler’s path, arm upraised.

  “Stop!” he yelled.

  III

  The Prowler skidded to a stop, his metal hooves leaving scratches on the solid rock.

  For a moment the three of them stood stock still, Stiffy’s jaw hanging in astonishment.

  Meek reached out a hand and patted the Prowler’s massive shoulder.

  “Good boy,” he said. “Good boy.”

  “Come away from there!” Stiffy yelled in sudden terror. “Just one good gulp and that guy would have you.”

  “Ah, shucks,” said Meek, “he won’t hurt anybody. He’s only hungry, that’s all.”

  “That,” declared Stiffy, “is just what I’m afraid of.”

  “You don’t understand,” insisted Meek. “He isn’t hungry for us. He’s starved for energy. Give him another shot from the gun.”

  Stiffy stared at the gun hanging in his hand.

  “You’re sure it wouldn’t make him sore?” he asked.

  “Gosh, no,” said Meek. “That’s what he wants. He soaks it up. Didn’t you notice how the beam went right into him without spattering or anything. And the way he sucked that power cable. He drained your ship of every drop of energy it had.”

  “He did what?” yelped Stiffy.

  “He drained the ship of energy. That’s what he lives on. That’s why he chased you. He wanted you to keep on shooting.”

  Stiffy clapped a hand to his forehead.

  “We’re sunk for certain, now,” he declared. “There might have been a chance to get back with just a few plates ripped off the ship. But with all the energy gone …”

  “Hey, Stiffy,” yelled Meek, “take a look at this.”

  Stiffy moved nearer, cautiously.

  “What you got now?” he demanded irritably.

  “These marks on his shoulder,” said Meek. His gloved finger shook excitedly as he pointed. “They’re the same kind of marks as were on those stones I read about in the book. Marks no one could read. Fellow who wrote the book figured they were made by some other race that had visited Juno. Maybe a race from outside the Solar System, even.”

  “Good gravy,” said Stiffy, in awe, “you don’t think …”

  “Sure, I do,” Meek declared with the air of a man who is sure of his knowledge. “A race came here one time and they had the Prowler along. For some reason they left him. Maybe he was just a robot and they didn’t have room for him, or maybe something happened to them …”

  “Say,” said Stiffy, “I bet you that’s just what he is. A robot. Attuned to thought waves. That’s why he minds you.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Meek agreed. “Thought waves would be the same, no matter who thought them … human being or a … well … or something else.”

  A sudden thought struck Stiffy. “Maybe them guys found the Lost Mine! By cracky, that would be something, wouldn’t it? Maybe this critter could lead us to it.”

  “Maybe?” Meek said doubtfully.

  Meek patted the Prowler’s rocky shoulder gently, filled with wonder. In some unguessed time, in some unknown sector of space, the Prowler had been fashioned by an alien people. For some reason they had made him, for some reason they had left him here. Abandonment or purpose?

  Meek shook his head. That would be something to puzzle over later, something to roll around in his brain on some monotonous flight into the maw of space.

  Space! Startled at the thought clanging on his brain he jerked a quick glance upward, saw the bleak stars staring at him. Eyes that seemed to be laughing at him, cruel, ironic laughter.

  “Stiffy,” he whispered. “Stiffy, I just thought of something.”

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  Stark terror walked in Meek’s words. “My oxygen tank is better than half gone. And the ship is wrecked. …”

  “Cripes,” said Stiffy, “I guess we just forgot. We sure are behind the eight ball. Somehow we got to get back to Asteroid City. And we got to get there quick.”

  Meek’s eyes brightened. “Stiffy, maybe … Maybe we could ride the Prowler.”

  Stiffy backed away. But Meek reached out and grasped his arm. “Come on. It’s the only way, Stiffy. We have to get there and the Prowler can take us.”

  “But … but … but …” Stiffy stammered.

  “Give me a leg up,” Meek ordered.

  Stiffy complied and Meek leaped astride the broad metal back, reached down and hauled Stiffy aboard.

  “Get going, you flea-bitten nag!” Meek yipped, in sudden elation.

  There was reason for elation. Not until that moment had he stopped to consider the Prowler might object to being ridden. Might consider it an insult.

  The Prowler apparently was astonished, but that was all. He shook his head in bewilderment and weaved his neck around as if he wasn’t quite sure just what to do. But at least he hadn’t started to take the place apart.

  “Giddap!” yelled Stiffy, bringing the butt of his pistol down.

  The Prowler jigged a little, then gathered himself together and started. The landscape blurred with speed as he leaped a mighty boulder, skipped along a narrow ledge around a slick-faced mountain, skidded a hairpin turn.

  Meek and Stiffy fought desperately to hang on. The metal back was slick and broad and there weren’t any handholds. They bounced and thumped, almost fell off a dozen times.

  “Stiffy,” yelled Meek, “how do we know he’s taking us to Asteroid City?”

  “
Don’t fret about that,” said Stiffy. “He knows where we want to go. He read our minds.”

  “I hope so,” Meek said, prayerfully.

  The Prowler whished around a right angle turn on a narrow ledge and the distant peaks wheeled sickeningly against the sky.

  Meek lay flat on his belly and hugged the Prowler’s sides. The mountains whistled past. He stole a look at the jagged peaks on the near horizon and they looked like a tight board fence.

  Oliver Meek fought manfully to get back his composure as the Prowled pranced down the main street of Asteroid City.

  The sidewalks were lined with hundreds of staring faces, faces that dropped in astonishment and disbelief.

  Stiffy was yelling at someone. “Now, doggone you, will you believe there is a Prowler?”

  And the man he yelled at didn’t have a word to say, just stood and stared.

  In the swarm of faces, Meek saw those of the Reverend Harold Brown and Andrew Smith and, almost as if in a dream, he waved jauntily to them. At least, he hoped the wave was jaunty. Wouldn’t do to let them know his knees were too weak to hold him up.

  Smith waved back and shouted something, but the Reverend Brown’s jaw hung open and he seemed too wonder-struck to move.

  This, thought Meek, is the kind of thing you read about. The conquering hero coming home astride his mighty charger. Only the conquering hero, he remembered with a sudden twinge, usually was a young lad who sat straight in the saddle instead of an old man with shoulders hunched from thirty years of poring over dusty ledgers.

  A man was stepping out into the street, a man who carried a gun in hand and suddenly Meek realized they were abreast of the Silver Moon.

  The armed man was Blacky Hoffman.

  Here, thought Meek, is where I get it. This is what I get for playing the big shot … for being a smart alec, for remembering how cards shouldn’t be dealt and for shooting a man’s gun out of his hand and letting myself be talked into being a marshal.

  But he sat stiff and as straight as he could on the Prowler and kept his eyes on Hoffman. That was the only way to do. That was the way all the heroes did in the stories he had read. And doggone, he was a hero. Whether he liked it or not, he was one.

  The street was hushed with sudden tension and the very air seemed to be crackling with the threat of direful happenings.

  Hoffman’s voice rang crisply through the stillness.

  “Go for your blasters, Meek!”

  “I have no blasters,” Meek told him calmly. “Your hoodlums took them from me.”

  “Borrow Stiffy’s,” snapped Hoffman, and added, with a nasty laugh: “You won’t need them long.”

  Meek nodded, watching Hoffman narrowly. Slowly he reached back for Stiffy’s gun. He felt it in his hand, wrapped his fingers tightly around it.

  Funny, he thought, how calm he was. Like he had been in the Silver Moon that night. There was something about a gun. It changed him, turned him into another man.

  He didn’t have a chance, he knew. Hoffman would shoot before he could ever get the gun around. But despite that, he felt foolishly sure. …

  Hoffman’s gun flashed in the weak sunlight, blooming with blue brilliance.

  For an instant, a single fraction of a second, Meek saw the flash of the beam straight in his eyes, but even before he could involuntarily flinch, the beam had bent. True to its mark, it would have drilled Meek straight between the eyes … but it didn’t go straight to its mark. Instead, it bent and slapped itself straight between the Prowler’s eyes.

  And the Prowler danced a little jig of happiness as the blue spear of energy knifed into its metal body.

  “Cripes,” gasped Stiffy, “he draws it! He ain’t satisfied with just taking it when you give it to him. He reaches out and gets it. Just like a lightning rod reaching up and grabbing lightning.”

  Puzzlement flashed across Hoffman’s face, then incredulity and finally something that came close to fear. The gun’s beam snapped off and his hands sagged. The gun dropped in the dust. The Prowler stood stock still.

  “Well, Hoffman?” Meek asked quietly, and his voice seemed to run all along the street.

  Hoffman’s face twitched.

  “Get down and fight like a man,” he rasped.

  “No,” said Meek, “I don’t do that. Because it wouldn’t be man to man. It would be me against your entire gang.”

  Hoffman started to back away, slowly, step by furtive step. Step by step the Prowler stalked him there in the silent street.

  Then Hoffman, with a scream of terror, broke and ran.

  “Get him!” Meek roared at the Prowler.

  The Prowler, with one lightning lunge, one flip of its whip-like neck, got him. Got him, gently, as Meek had meant he should.

  Howling in mingled rage and terror, Hoffman dangled by the seat of his pants from the Prowler’s beak. Neatly as any circus horse, the Prowler wheeled and trotted back to the Silver Moon, carrying Hoffman with a certain gentle grace that was not lost upon the crowd.

  Hoffman quieted and the crowd’s jeers rang against the dome. The Prowler pranced a bit, jiggled Hoffman up and down.

  Meek raised a hand for silence, spoke to Hoffman. “O.K., Mr. Hoffman, call out your men. All of them. Out into the middle of the street. Where we can see them.”

  Hoffman swore at him.

  “Jiggle him some,” Meek told the Prowler. The Prowler jiggled him and Hoffman bawled and clawed at empty air.

  “Damn you,” shrieked Hoffman, “get out into the street. All of you. Just like he said.”

  No one stirred.

  “Blaine,” yelled Hoffman. “Get out there! You, too, Smithers. Loomis. Blake!”

  They came slowly, shame-faced. At a command from Meek they unholstered their blasters and heaved them in a pile.

  The Prowler deposited Hoffman with them.

  Meek saw Andrew Smith standing at the edge of the sidewalk and nodded to him.

  “There you are, Mr. Smith. Rounded up, just like you wanted them.”

  “Neat,” said Stiffy, “but not gaudy.”

  Slowly, carefully, bones aching, Meek slid from the Prowler’s back, was surprised his legs would hold him up.

  “Come in and have a drink,” yelled a dozen voices all at once.

  “Bet your life,” agreed Stiffy, licking his chops.

  Men were slapping Meek on the back, yelling at him. Yelling friendly things, calling him an old he-wolf.

  He tried to thrust out his chest but didn’t succeed too well. He hoped they wouldn’t insist on his drinking a lot of bocca.

  A hand tugged at Meek’s elbow. It was the Reverend Brown.

  “You aren’t going to leave that beast out here all alone?” he asked. “No telling what he might do.”

  “Ah, shucks,” protested Stiffy, “he’s gentle as a kitten. Stands without hitching.”

  But even as he spoke, the Prowler lifted his head, almost as if he were sniffing, started down the street at a swinging trot.

  “Hey,” yelled Stiffy, “come back here, you cross-eyed crow-bait!”

  The Prowler didn’t falter in his stride. He went even faster.

  Cold fear gripped Meek by the throat. He tried to speak and gulped instead. He’d just thought of something. The power plant that supplied Asteroid City with its power and light, the very oxygen it breathed, was down that way.

  A power plant and an alien robot that was starved for energy!

  “My stars!” gasped Meek.

  He shook off the minister’s hand and galloped down the street, shrieking at the Prowler. But the Prowler had no thought of stopping.

  Panting, Meek slowed from a gallop to a trot, then to a labored walk. Behind him, he heard Stiffy puffing along. Behind Stiffy trailed practically the entire population of Asteroid City.

  Far ahead came the sound o
f rending steel and crashing structure as the Prowler ripped the plant apart to get at the juice.

  Stiffy gained Meek’s side and panted at him. “Cripes, they’ll crucify us for this. We got to get him out of there.”

  “How?” asked Meek.

  “Danged if I know,” said Stiffy.

  One side of the plant was a mass of tangled wreckage, surrounding a hole out of which protruded the Prowler’s hind quarters. Terrified workers and maintenance men were running for their lives. Live wires spat and crackled with flaming energy.

  IV

  Meek and Stiffy halted a half block away, breath whistling in their throats. The Prowler’s tail, protruding from the hole in the side of the plant, twitched happily. Meek regarded the scene with doleful thoughts.

  “I wish,” Stiffy declared, “we’d stayed out there and died. It would have been easier than what’s liable to happen to us now.”

  Feet thumped behind them and a hand grabbed Meek’s shoulder, grabbed it hard. It was Andrew Smith, a winded, apoplectic Andrew Smith.

  “What are you going to do?” he shouted at Meek.

  Meek swallowed hard, tried to make his voice even. “Just studying over the situation, Mr. Smith. I’ll figure out something in a minute.”

  “Sure he will,” insisted Stiffy. “Leave him alone. Give him time. He always does what he says he’ll do. He said he’d round up Blacky for you, and he did. He went out single-handed and captured the Prowler. He …”

  “Yeah,” yelled Smith, “and he said the Prowler would stand without hitching, too. And did he stand? I ask you …”

  “He didn’t say that,” Stiffy interrupted, testily. “I said that.”

  “It don’t make a bit of difference who said it,” shrieked Smith. “I got stock in that plant there. And the Prowler’s ruining it. He’s jeopardizing the life of this whole city. And it’s all your fault. You brought him here. I’ll sue you, the both of you, so help me …”

  “Ah, shut up,” snapped Stiffy. “Who can think with you blabbering around?”

  Smith danced in rage. “Who’s blabbering? I got a good mind to …”

  He doubled up his fist and started toward Stiffy.

  And once again Oliver Meek did something he never would have thought of doing back on Earth. He put out his gloved hand, deliberately, and pushed Smith in the face. Pushed hard, so hard that Smith thumped down in the dust of the street and sat there, silenced by surprise.